Chapter 97 - The Sister’s Gambit
The platform groaned, a horrifying shriek of tortured steel that vibrated through our boots as hundreds of tons of seawater began flooding the lower ballast chambers. The structure tilted five degrees to the port side, loose tools and empty fuel drums clattering across the grated decks.
"Liam, evacuate your team!" I shouted over the blaring siren. "Get the tender running! I’m going down to the core!"
"Not a chance in hell," Liam snapped, grabbing my arm and pulling me back. "We leave together, Maya! The feds have our chopper hovering above the upper pad!"
"If that core blows, the offshore oil reserves stored beneath this platform will ignite!" I shouted, pointing toward the heavy industrial conduits running along the ceiling. "It will cause an ecological catastrophe across the entire New England coast, and Arthur’s offshore money will vanish into untraceable offshore shadow accounts that will fund every black-market syndicate in Europe! I have to shut it down!"
Victoria watched us with a feral grin, leaning against the damp bulkhead. "Take her down there, Liam. Let her see what Father left behind. Let her see the will."
Liam locked Victoria’s uninjured wrist in steel cuffs and shoved her into the custody of two federal marshals. "Secure her on the tender! If she moves, shoot her! Maya, you and I have eight minutes."
We sprinted through the trembling lower corridors, descending an industrial spiral staircase that wound deep into the submerged lower hull of the platform. The ambient temperature dropped drastically, the air turning frigid and dense with sea damp. At the bottom of the shaft stood a heavy hermetically sealed blast door marked: *PROJECT ARCHIVE: SUB-LEVEL ZERO.*
The manual wheel on the blast door was frozen with sea salt. Liam gripped the steel spokes, his veins bulging as he heaved against the rusted lock. With a groaning crack of metal, the wheel spun, the heavy door swinging open to reveal a massive, circular chamber bathed in eerie blue light.
In the center of the chamber, suspended within a cylinder of reinforced acrylic, was an immense supercomputing cluster surrounded by ancient paper archives stored in climate-controlled glass cases. But it was not the machinery that stopped my breath.
Sitting in an antique leather armchair in front of the primary terminal, calmly typing commands into a glowing keyboard, was a woman with silver hair pulled into an immaculate chignon, wearing an exquisite tailored charcoal suit.
She turned slowly, resting her cold, aristocratic eyes upon me.
"Mother?" I whispered, my world fracturing into incomprehensible shards.
Madeline Thorne did not flinch. She picked up a silver fountain pen from the desk and closed a heavy leather binder.
May you like
"You took your time getting here, Maya," my mother said softly, her voice entirely devoid of the frail, trembling dementia she had feigned for the past five years. "Arthur was right about one thing: you always were the most sentimental of my daughters."
***
